Austin, TX

Fellows and government partners built Prepared.ly to pull in weather data feeds, assess red flags, and offer tasks for citizen fire preparation.

When fellows Aurelio Tinjo, Emily Wright-Moore, and Joe Merante were in Austin, 1,300 homes in nearby Bastrop County, TX had been ravaged by wildfire. It was no surprise that the fellows decided to tackle wildfire preparedness as one of their projects. Armed with information from the Austin Fire Departments Wildland Urban Interface and citizen polls, the fellows built Prepared.ly to pull in weather data feeds, assess red flags and offers tasks for citizen fire preparation. In addition to building the app, the team promoted it heavily via blog posts, a Huffington Post opinion editorial article and via word-of-mouth to locals. The app continues to serve the City of Austin and offers near real-time information on property risk.